well i'm tom are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. does the president have the power to play judge jury and executioner when it comes to the fate of america and there's a america have the authority to launch a drone attacks in nations with whom we're not at war all that and more in tonight's big picture rumble also as the northeast faces the full force winter storm just months after surviving hurricane sandy many are sure to ask the question what's causing all this weird weather the answer is climate change that's thanks in part to this nation's toxic addiction to fossil fuels is a time we started to invest in clean and green renewable sources of energy and work to prevent future devastating monster storms and later we'll have

a your take by take a live segment your chance to call in and ask a question or make a comment live on the or not just with me but by my panel as well. it's friday are you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's rumble big picture rubble chris solomon conservative commentator and activist stewart and union organizer and author and marc harrold libertarian commentator and author and thanks for all to all of you for joining me tonight here at home with us ok for the first time the media is all focused on our drone warfare program there's the n.b.c. leak this week explaining that americans can be killed if they're deemed to be a member of al qaeda and pose an immediate threat john brennan the architect of that program a nominee to head up the cia testified before the senate intelligence committee on thursday where he defended the drone program so a couple of questions are we as

a nation. setting a dangerous precedent by launching drone strikes against countries against people inside countries with whom we're not at war of course it's a terrible precedent and of course it's being promulgated by president obama who started by george w. bush right when he's all for you know you guys have got to start admitting that all the things obama said he hated about bush he's doing all i am great to say i am not disagreeing with you my point is this is not our natalie that is battling it he's killing he's got his list he can kill americans overseas with no due process this is outrageous it really is outrageous and it needs to be stopped so why are the republicans in congress not speaking out why are the democrats in congress not speaking out well you know i think because they're wimps yes now you think the republicans did probably yeah ok. well i mean yes it is a bad precedent and it is wrong but let's the truth which is that.

war military action always leads to bad games including the deaths of civilians children noncombat we have no declaration of war story no we don't we have this continuing war on on on terror the president very often is even stopped using that phrase that's good now it's time to get out of afghanistan and it's it's it's it's time so use are you saying you support the drugs no i'm not saying that at all i'm going to say i'm just saying and that let's not pretend that you can have a clean war war is not we have done and i think any of this is it has to sanitize it and that is and that's one of the reasons why they ought to let bradley manning out of prison out of the marine brig because we need to know what's being done in our name and and we've been separated from the horrors of the war in iraq and

afghanistan during vietnam it came into your living room every day at six thirty and you know it hasn't it hasn't been a rag and we get to see cartoon characters mark your thoughts on this war is messy and that's why it needs to be so clearly defined nothing is more important constitutionally when the president commander in chief goes to war in the name of the people that the people's most representative branches of government are spoken and this is it's a travesty that we do it at all we're not at war this internet we're all over the plan this intervention is policy is getting us nowhere but on this specifically when we talk about american citizens it's the you know it's definition of deprivation of life or limb this is deprivation of life without due process it's unconstitutional because we're not at war it's immoral the way it's being done and it's unconstitutional because it's a fifth amendment violation because we're killing americans without due process there's no judicial oversight it's you know we did not and six the moment some of them and i ate them on the fourteenth amendment yeah this is one of those things you ask in a vacuum hey do you think it's ok for the president to send drones over kill american citizens without any due process people just instinctively would be no of

course not i don't know how we. out here on this one this is one of those things that the really everyone and if you're not speaking out against this unless you truly believe in it but i can't imagine how we got here to be speaking out against that is you are now we were john you and jay bybee and you know in this terrified little cobol around bush and cheney and it has continued with the obama's initiatives at all amped up is crisscrossed with well it's also the whole fact of the matter is this president has consistently said i don't care what the constitution says i'm going to do what i want i haven't heard him say those words but certainly in this case that in my opinion is yes doing and i think frankly what's going to what's going to change this is is when mexico decides that they're going to take out a mexican drug lord that they've been looking for for some time and they discover that he's in a neighborhood phoenix so they just take out a city block with a drone because these drones are cheap enough that every country in the world is going to them and so anyhow we'll see but i think we've seen we've established a horrible precedent that is going to come back to haunt us all right to work let's talk about organized labor in the last two years we've seen labor strongholds like

michigan and indiana pass right to work for less laws republicans in missouri and pennsylvania are considering as well meanwhile republicans in congress are taking a step further senator rand paul it is to a national right to work for less law this week and senate minority leader mitch mcconnell threw his support behind it workers and right to work for a right to work for less states receive on average fifteen hundred dollars a year less fewer benefits experience more workplace accidents and deaths but here's the thing basically what right to work for less laws say is you're in a union shop you're getting the benefits of the union but you don't have to pay the dues what i don't understand is why you know if i went to a exclusive club that mitch mcconnell rand paul was a member of and i guarantee you they are and i walked into that club and i said i'll have a glass of champagne and i'll have a couple of those or d'oeuvres yeah i'll sit here in this nice couch and i'll have a cigar and the fella comes over and says excuse me sir there's a private club you have to pay dues and i said no no it's a right to right to smoke cigars and drink. champagne law that's been

passed chris what what do conservatives not get about being a member of a club and dues to that here is the deal tom i'm glad you set it up like this ok you have your club you know you're not a member and the union says you know what unless you join this club you have no right to work you can't get any job do you think that's fair this is a pure freedom people should have the right to get a job if they want to deal with their boss to join a union or not be you this is not you're talking huge organism it's not right to work for us it is whether or not you have the right to join certain clubs or not and under the under the law it don't have right to work it's like i'm sorry you're not going to be able to earn money for your family unless we get to take more of your paycheck into our coffers to spend on our policies and our politicians and

that's not freedom it's not fair and it's just outrageous that people are forty you would rather have a job you're forced to pay so much you know you're here. or you want to telegraph for a ladder one person should should try and take on the force of the private yes that's a free ride i think union should be able to tell people i'm a little now where i literally went to work on those who are good my free market is a member of the bar association he has to be a member of the bar association every doctor is a member of the medical association they have to be members of the medical association to practice right to right to work says that the union can negotiate your contract get you the raises get you the benefits and is required by federal law to represent you if you work there but you shouldn't have to pay union dues even if it's been bargained between the rest. and the employer. so and so and

so the right to work. with you strip it down it's simply a way to weaken unions we've worked on all kinds a right to work fights i've worked on several right to work fights myself the truth of the matter is wages are better in right to work state as you said they're bad the benefits are better and if some of them want to work in a right to work in a union shop go someplace where there is plenty of other places so chris are you saying that they and that more and let me just make this clear if you don't agree with the unions politics there's a rule called the back rule and you can write the union and say and say i don't want any of my agency fees you don't have to join the union just the fees for representation to go to any political activity and the union is required to

withhold that amount of your of your money so mark you know the government should stay absolutely out of this i disagree with rand paul on this one i agree with a lot of what he comes up with but i disagree here there is an association all right it is involved here but if they did but it's a first amendment association rights limitation on government were really a limitation on congress but a limitation on government generally the way it's been interpreted bottom line here is what's paramount is the government should not be interfering with private contracts the employer may want to have a union shop i mean that might be his goal and that's a contract he should be able to enforce between themselves and his employees the government should stay out of it the association of concerns go away from the first member constitutional point of view of the government stays out of it i think this is one where the i think about it it's on the interference of contractors the money is of paramount importance to main that when the government stayed out of it employers were literally killing people who were trying to unionize i mean literally the rockefeller rockefeller's ludlow child rather than nine hundred thirty nine closer to the homestead twenty thirteen it's one hundred that's or now i think that's why the wagner act was passed in one thousand thirty five was

because so many people. being murdered by not by use by employers who did not want to have unions in their place of state assistance and to go back to mark's point let's talk about government unions public session or union you think where the government hackers showing his taking the money out of the paycheck and then handing it to a union i mean that is simply a way to try to weaken unions there is no need to way there is no three there is no brainer we can see their mind with when i want to go for you to show up at a and again a fancy golf go for dessert and say i don't have to be a member of time i have the right to. know who or not is this the states they take to run this. except for indiana from michigan to wisconsin to all pennsylvania are states that progressives have to win to win federal elections that was deliberate this if some way did we could actually make pass right to work

ninety percent of the union members opt out no because they love it. so let me give you let me show you give you the best example there was a good year play in union city tennessee which is close to work from west to the extreme northwest corner of tennessee they had two thousand workers here tennessee's a right to work state there were six non members out of two thousand which may mean it was entirely voluntary what they had yesterday was already stated joy but you don't want to extend that freedom to other people so your argument is that when people have freedom they join but we should coworkers other people just in case they might think for them no no all i'm saying is that the union has to represent the union negotiates a contract the employer agrees they should have to pay some be not membership fee some called an agency fee for that but that representation that we've got to wrap for just just will have more of tonight's big picture already.

let me let me i want to wouldn't let me ask you a question. here on this network is we're not in the debate we have our knives out if. we do this right it's about staying there to get here in a situation where b. and i don't want to talk about surveillance me. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard working as a big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money because you sir are a fool you know what that is my other terrorist cells in your neighborhood want to keep us safe to feature a sufi on live from the christian point you. can stick your beliefs about it. if you know the group are going to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that. please.

thank you i will join me tonight or kris solomon stuart a cuff and marc harrold let's get back to it what does a prison state look like increasingly it looks like america according to a new congressional research report the federal prison population in america has increased nearly eight hundred percent since ronald reagan was sworn in when there were just twenty five thousand federal inmates nationwide today there are two hundred nineteen thousand which makes the united states number one in the world in jailing its own citizens both per capita in an absolute numbers the congressional research service attributed the prison population spiked to an uptick in nixon's drug war and republican laws that require mandatory minimum jail sentences congressional research service is advise is congress to repeal mandatory minimums and expand early release programs legislation was introduced in congress last week

to tax and regulate marijuana just like alcohol in those states that have legalized it like washington and colorado so question mark isn't it time for us to fail and nixon's failed drug war and say enough already absolutely nine hundred seventy controlled substances act especially putting marijuana as a schedule one which it clearly should not be has led to mass incarceration early on it was the one nine hundred seventy act it was nixon it was followed through with don't just say no with reagan and nancy reagan you know spearheaded that to a large degree and then more recently we've got a absolute you know penetration of both state of local politics state politics and national politics with private prison companies and bed space has become a commodity we have a country that you know where we seem to not know exactly who were with war with around the country i can tell you with these drug laws this mass incarceration this this country is currently at war with its own citizens because you criminalize so much that everyone's a criminal and you put these folks in jail this is ridiculous we incarcerate more you know this land of the free home of the brave in all this and we're talking

about drone strikes against our citizens and. carsharing more people than any other country per capita you start to really wonder what kind of moral high ground we have in the in the world on the you know on the world stage because you know people look at these things and it's just amazing to me this war on drugs is a failed thing it's a war on our citizens it needs to end it's starting to crumble a little bit but my problem is i think that as it the society accepts it and it crumbles in the popular culture at least with the electorate these prison companies are still going to have the authority through lobbying to keep it going you realize you're arguing against the privatization it will absolutely there's always two or three arguments i would come off that you know in here it is not quite a libertarian no it's not at all and i get criticized for it but there i believe in privatization a lot of things but especially with my background in law enforcement again seems a little bit you know to be attention i don't believe in private prisons because you're talking about incarcerating people not only deciding laws should force incarceration through a system function of the state is just yesterday when we had one and i don't know whether i'm as a steward not only are we imprisoning our own people but we're doing it using using

nixon's failed drug war but we're doing it in a very bizarre and arguably very racist fashion or you look at the stats on who's using illegal drugs in the united states pot heroin cocaine the illegal drugs and by about a ten to one ratio it's white teenagers and yet you look at who's incarcerated for it and by about a ten to one ratio it's young african-american men right i mean this is there is there is there is something wrong on all whole buncha levels here a whole lot of levels i mean part of it is that as you know we've had thirty five years of stagnant wages there are no more with the d.m.d.'s realisation of the country there are no more good paying jobs for people with just high school education there's a sense of hopelessness and in large communities of people that's one two there's a nail as mark correctly pointed out a profit motive than locking up people. corrections corporation of america is

probably the worst offender at that we're building more and more private prisons are allowing corporations to build more and more private prefers a few actual growth industries in the one of the states one of the few growth industries and that's that's really sad and mort made a good point about criminalizing so much be hate private behavior but i do think we cannot leave. the economic problem which is like i say thirty five years of stagnant wages declining benefits and. underclass or that's creating or so so you and i don't have young people who become entrepreneurs because there's no other option and they become entrepreneurs or something that's illegal because they can't break into the legal economy that's exactly right and something like this is happening in a lot of western democracies the in formalisation of work in other words

underground work in this country not to mention what i did and so what it's done to places like guatemala and honduras and colombia which had some mexico which have militarized their entire country to try to stop it already of our drug and chris i know i have somewhat of a libertarian and streak and i will just criticize both sides but we have a problem in this country and that is our our legislators on the local state and federal level love to make laws whether. it's needed or not and so so much like the other guest said private behavior is now illegal and that's a real problem and i used to work for someone who used to always joke that the worst thing that happened in washington d.c. was air conditioning because congress was only in town for a couple months and then in the summer they'd have to leave instead of sitting around dreaming up new ways to to pass laws to make different things illegal i mean except you just have to back in the one nine hundred twenty s. before air conditioned. it is the over. gentle anti-drug laws but

a real romance saying if you know for every problem. our legislature seems to think that there has to be a legal a law solution and sometimes our problems are we always i seem to do just fine as a country for over one hundred years when everything from marijuana to heroin were legal and available over the counter i just don't understand why you know portugal has done this not to be decriminalized all drugs all drugs and basically what they've done is they've broken the back of organized crime they're cutting the reach of infection rates they're dramatically cutting their drug addiction rates actually because people people kids can see so you don't we're going to really revenue yeah yeah exactly i mean you know look what happened when we handed out all prohibition you know it's you know people can actually come out and get treatment if they if they're addicted and well i will say i don't support the legalization of drugs primarily for as so that the government will have yet another thing to tax if

they're not banning something or legislating about it they're taxing it and so you know we have to be worried that if you're not being put in jail for it you're being required to pay a fee in the form of a tax. carioca holland america yeah there's very little of that where you are allowed to do in this country that is not either illegal or tax a boat on wednesday to allow gays to openly serve as scouts and leaders of the later pressure from religious groups and in principle mormons peers and anti-gay board voices within the scouts here's what president obama said about the boy scouts. my attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and and opportunity the same way everybody else does in every institution and walk of life and. you know that the scouts are a great institution that are promoting young people and exposing them to.

news and and leadership that you know will serve people for the rest of their lives and i think that nobody should be barred for that so stuart shouldn't the boy scouts come into the twenty first century i mean originally the scouts were created as a as an organization of repair young men for the army the military has now said we're going to embrace gays which i don't get with the scouts well absolutely they should i mean there should be the same rights for people who have a different sexual orientation lesbian gay transgender bi sexual people is anybody else. you know people should be allowed to be who they are and to be treated with dignity and respect just because they're human beings and that goes for the scouts and anybody else they out that's you know the problem here is some people. get confused and and and

misconstrue being gay with with pedophilia well it's not that they're misconstrued i think it's that they're intentionally conflating the right that's the argument let's talk about this ok chris in the competitive environment so the boy scouts have existed for i don't know one hundred hundred fifty years and it's about personal growth god and country a lot of boy scout troops are headquartered. through churches and that people want to have an organization and we support them because they're five to one c three so we support that we have that don't go into the red herring out on that tom said rather listen to this if there are so many americans who want such a group then why don't they start their own group why do they have derailed son of the guy who started the boy scouts started a group for gay scouts and well why don't they just started their own group by this it was like years ago whatever is harass you know you instead they want it really

is a group gay gay people not gay people no four for straight people just have another would like to be really here you know the argument that another thirty years ago it was made about not letting no action to the boys i did not say that you should have a separate organization just for gays there are a group of people who want unity everybody all together so what do they do they go to an organization that already exists and say you have to change instead of saying hey you know what we're going to start our own everybody's welcome gay straight whatever everybody's welcome and we're going to compete a body just liberals can't stand competition so they have to go into existing organizations and change them. just a minute left mark and this seems to me like a civil rights issue particular with an organization that state funds state funds and is tax and i think that there is a civil rights aspect to this if they're taking the federal funds are going to have to comply with those laws they certainly can always go pure private and not take any funds at all. i think the boy scouts and there are some issues because this argument had a little you know do they have

a right to preserve this policy if they want to they do i believe they do as a private organization and you get the funding things will different i'm an eagle scout i'm a boy scout i came all the way through scouting you can judge how good an organization it is i guess but i'm an eagle scout and my personal view is i would get rid of this policy i think it is discriminatory i don't think it's a good message to send i think part of advancing as a as a boy or as a man or a woman in the girl scouts is a situation where you need to realize where the world is today i think they have the right to the policy if they want as a private organization my personal opinion even if the eagle scout is a boy scout is that they need to abandon this that is discriminatory they all had our say on that last question quickfire who knew former president george w. bush enjoyed paint himself in the nude the smoking gun is in possession of several images it claims were hacked from personal e-mails belonging to people close to the bush family and those e-mails contain a number of paintings that were allegedly done by the former president himself two of the pains depict bush bathing one in the shower and one in the bath can you

spell narcissist and the third picture shows bush hard at work over a canvas painting a church acar named who suffers claim responsibility for the stolen e-mails says there's more to come so which bush original is your favorite shower no the bath tub no you are the church mark i mean really you're going to if you're going to paint nude to paint themselves i don't know which is my favorite i don't know i mean if you want to paint nudes or you know whatever fine but who painted themselves especially one of his feet i agree a little narcissistic very very narcissistic i wonder what they learned yale i mean if you had a brand people on the block we know. it today we just have ten seconds i like this picture of barney he did a really nice i mean i thought i have to die that was really. and i think he's planning on selling them to pay for as you know war crimes trial so yes to that effect chris solomon stewart a.